


Let the Beauty Sleep

by TeamGwenee



Series: A Twist in the Tale [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, F/M, Horror, Minor Character Death, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:07:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22296052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamGwenee/pseuds/TeamGwenee
Summary: A horror fic inspired by Sleeping Beauty. Some Ghosts just can't be put to rest.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: A Twist in the Tale [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604908
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53





	Let the Beauty Sleep

Jaime was holding her when she woke up, watching her with a line between his eyebrows.

“You were screaming again last night,” he told her.

Brienne tried to shake away the pounding behind her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she yawned.

“You should be,” he told her in a not quite jovial voice. “I need my beauty sleep.”

“You are terrifically old,” Brienne said with a slur.

Jaime pressed his head into her shoulder, golden in the morning sun. So handsome, so kind beneath the snide and sarcasm. There were times Brienne had to wonder why he even looked twice at her. what mystic force managed to bind them together? She never said anything, never wished to hurt Jaime by voicing her doubts. But the question still lingered between them.

“We’ve got nothing on today, you can catch a bit more sleep if you need it.”

Brienne didn’t even bother pretending she didn’t. She mumbled a slur of agreement and shut her eyes, coaxed into rest by the warm press of his arms, chest and legs.  
  


#

_my skin is peeling white, like paper torn paper cracked and dry and peeling dents in my lips, and raw flesh shining my fingers and knuckles and nails chewed and broken and sore_

“She’s awake. Can you hear me?”

_like paper all of it like paper the stories writ upon the paper splitting over my knuckles as white as the bones_

“Miss, can you say your name for me?”

“Has she said anything?”

_only bones just bones skin wrapped over the bones_

“Barely responsive.”

_where is the rest there was more_

“Ma’am, can you confirm your identity?”

_More flesh and blood and others. Others the boy and the false friend where is it now now where have they all gone all of them gone on the wall_

“Just yes or no. Are you Brienne Tarth?”

Am I?

“You can nod or shake your head. Are you Brienne Tarth?”

_my throat is paper too it tears breaks crackles as I speak_

#

  1. Brienne Lannister is twenty-seven years old.
  2. Brienne Lannister has been married four years.
  3. Brienne Lannister has a husband called Jaime whom she loves dearly.
  4. Brienne Lannister lives in King’s Landing.
  5. Brienne Lannister works in a gym.
  6. Brienne Lannister is completely fine.



_#_

_“Are you Brienne Tarth?”_

_“I was.”_

#

Brienne had been living in King’s Landing for two months when she first met Jaime Lannister. She was doing well. She had just started at the gym, relishing the chance to be paid to work and work and push until her skin wad burning and there was nothing in her ears but the throbbing of her heart and the screaming of her lungs. She didn’t have ‘friends’ but she never had friends anyway, but she did have _friendly_ acquaintances and a pet tarantula which was close enough. Life was good, life was fine. Brienne was good and fine and happy.

But she when she stood caught in the glare of the fog lights, her only concern was who would feed Sid when she was gone.

Her senses were only returned to her as she was sent crushing into ground, gravel shredding5 her skin as burning tarmac and smoke flooded her nostrils. A heavy force pushed down on her heart, crushing her ribs.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” a voice growled into her ears beneath the squeal of shrieks and sirens.

“I was thinking about my name,” she whispered, so softly that he didn’t hear.

He helped her to stand and stood by her as she brushed off offers of an ambulance and shouted down the driver’s apologies with her own. He took her to her a café and pushed tea into her shaking hands and told her his name was Jaime and when the shock was worn off and she couldn’t grit her teeth and struggle through the bruises he took her to A&E.

Jaime liked to joke that it was their first date and Brienne liked to humour him with a laugh.

She never repeated what she told him under the sirens.

#

_All for a dare. For a stupid fucking dare. Something to shut up Hyle and Ron and Ben and Mark. I know I should have turned back when Pod turned up and begged me to go the home, to not go in. And I certainly should have sent him back, but tales or no tales the streets were dark, and I felt better having him join me and Hyle inside than letting him wonder back alone._

_Winterfell was so beautiful, resting in the moonlight. There were paths already cut through the thorns and brambles where dare devils and thrill seekers had left their marks._

_I paused at the gate, just taking it all in. The silver stones crumbling into the grasping thorns, dissolving into darkness._

_“Scared Beauty?” Hyle jeered in a voice that didn’t quite smother the wobble in his mouth._

_“Not a bit.”_

_I was. More than a bit. But it was the best type of scared. My fingers were cold, but my cheeks were warm and everything was burning. I have always loved old things. I wanted to be a historian, a professor of the Long Night and get to handle the ancient relics and discover all their stories and all their ghosts._

_I’m less fond of ghost stories now._

#

“I’m setting the pace today,” Jaime announced as they jogged down the stairs of the building t the front door.

“Do I go too fast for you?” Brienne teased.

Jaime smirked as he shouldered the front door open, but whatever response he was about to make died under the flash of the photographers’ cameras.

“Seven hells,” he muttered. “What has Cersei done now?”

But the cameras, for once, weren’t directed at him. As more and more people called out her name Jaime finally remembered the date and grasped Brienne’s shoulder, hustling her back inside.

“I hoped they would just leave things be,” Brienne muttered despondently. “Why can’t they just let things lie?”

Of course they couldn’t. Of course they wouldn’t. It was the tenth anniversary. The mystery had never died. Countless books had been written. Podcasts and documentaries and a Westflix series. And now a film. A fucking blockbuster to mark the anniversary.

(Lynesse Hightower had been cast as the final girl. They had named her BeeBee and the poster had her posing in a grubby tank top and panda eyes.)

She had a text from Sandor, telling her the press were camping outside the gym and not to bother coming into work that day.

It had been a small hope that changing her name would afford her some anonymity, a safety blanket against her past. Jaime thought that was why she had insisted on taking his name, when everything about her suggested she would insist on keeping her own. She was the last Tarth left, surely, she would want to continue her family’s legacy? Even if the Tarths weren’t as ancient and prestigious as the Lannisters.

But Brienne Tarth didn’t deserve a legacy.

Brienne Tarth ran.

#

_Pod held my hand and I was grateful for it. For that small, trusting presence. It made me feel so strong. We trudged through the bog, the smell of dirt and dead leaves clogging our nostrils._

_“Does she really eat people’s tongues, the Grey Lady?”_

_“I thought she sliced people’s throats?” I asked, anxious to get the semantics of the bloodthirsty ghost correct. Ever since I arrived at Molestown care home I had heard many versions of the Grey Lady of Winterfell Castle, but the throat slitting aspect was the most persistent. “She walks the halls, searching for her beloved husband, and if she finds you and believes you played a part in his murder, she cuts your throat.”_

_“No,” Podrick insisted. “She was a young maiden held captive by her husband, who locked her in the tower during the day and beat her every night. She lays in bed, waiting for a true knight to rescue her. If you kiss her and she finds you pure of heart, her soul is put to rest. But if she finds you impure, she eats your tongue.”_

_“Either way, there’s a beautiful woman waiting to be kissed,” Hyle said with his usual swagger._

_“You can’t kiss her!” Pod wailed, clinging to my hand ever tighter. “What if she bites you?”_

_“I never minded a few teeth,” Hyle said, and I would have smacked him if Pod wasn’t now hanging off me with all his might._

_“If Hyle tries kissing the poor old Grey Lady, we can be sure she will be more scared of us than we’ll be of her,” I confided with Pod, which got one last watery smile out of him._

#

“They’ve shifted now that the police are here,” Jaime informed her as he peeked through the curtains. “But they will have got what they wanted. Be sure to see ‘Distressed Brienne Lannister retreats inside on the anniversary of the Winterfell tragedy.’ Well what did they expect when they jump out at you on our doorstep?” Living as Cersei Baratheon’s brother had blessed Jaime with a keen insight into the world of the press.

Brienne listened with only half an ear as she sliced and cut in the kitchen. The steel was cool, her hand deft and firm, the meat pink and her blood red.

“Shit Brienne, your hand!”

Brienne looked dimly at her hand, at the slivers and slashes on her palm and fingers.

“Oh yes,” she said mildly. “I’ve got blood on my hands.”

#

_Pod was holding on tight. But our hands were slick with sweat and my legs were gaining so much more ground than his. I thought he was behind me. I could hear his footsteps. I could feel his breath._

_I sprinted down the steps and through the corridors. I tried to follow the moonlight, but I just blindly wound my way deeper into the stone belly of the castle. I thought I was going down a passage to the grounds._

_The crypts. It was the crypts._

_Line after line of the dead sleeping in stone. Crumbling bones and dust. And two bodies of freshly pierced flesh and hot dripping blood. That was when I realised it wasn’t Pod following behind me._

_It wasn’t his footsteps. It wasn’t his breath._

#

“Brienne, I really think we should go to the hospital. Or at least let me help.”

Brienne stood in the bathroom, the door shut, clicked and locked behind her. She could see the shadow Jaime’s feet beneath the crack.

“It’s alright. I’m sorting it out.”

The porcelain was as cold as stone.

#

_I had to take a step closer to see what the heart was made from. At first, I thought it was carved into the stone. Their blood was black in the feeble light. It wasn’t their tongues of their throats but their mouths. I couldn’t tell at first with Hyle. He was always smiling. But that empty grin was too big for Pod. He was so small._

_I was down there for two days. Two days with the bones and the blood and the dust and the smiles._

_And her. Waiting in the shadows._

_“Will you kill me as well?” I asked her as I stood beneath my friends’ bodies, pinned spread eagled to the wall._

_“No,” she rasped, air whistling through the gash in her papery neck. “Not yet. I still have a purpose for you.”_

_#_

“Brienne, what are you doing in there?”

From beneath the fog, Brienne could hear the fear in his voice. But the concern she would have felt at his distress had shattered and was crumbling into dust.

“Brienne?”

Brienne lifted her fingers from the mirror and cocked her head to one side.

The grey face looking back at her was almost gentle, smiling gently from the red heart Brienne had smeared on with her fingers.

“Brienne, _please_ tell me what you’re doing?”

He sounded near tears.

_False tears. They mean nothing._

Brienne opened the door, revealing the bloodied mirror to her ashen-faced husband.

“I’m decorating,” Brienne said softly.

Jaime took her hands into his. He crushed her fingers beneath her own but she felt them no more than she would the brush of a feather. Her head was clouded over and a ringing in her ears grew louder and louder. It felt like a dream

_That’s right. It’s all been a dream._

Brienne untangled her fingers from Jaime’s and brushed his cheek.

_You have been sleeping and now you awake. See the world for what it truly is. See the man for who he truly is. See what steps have led you here today. You have been sleepwalking all this time, following the call of my voice._

Brienne had been living in King’s Landing for two months when she saw the lady in grey watching her from the other side of the street.

 _It’s all been a dream_. _And now you will awake._

“Brienne?” Jaime asked as Brienne’s fingers slipped from his cheeks to his neck. “What’s going on?”

“Look in the mirror Jaime,” Brienne whispered. “She’s awake.”

_#_

_That is it. That is the answer. He cries into my hands but they are false tears. His touch is so soft but it is a false touch. My hearts breaks but the pain must be endured. So many tears and so many breaks. Let the hurt end. Let the darkness fall and let us all rest. At the end of the day night must fall and we have always been walking this path. Let it break beneath my fingers, let the life be forced from the tunnel and his breath squeezed into the air to linger and fade. Let my fingers close._

_But they do not._

_Come now girl, it was always going this way. Pay his tears no mind._

_Let my fingers close._

_But they will not._

_His lips are upon mine and my heart is glad._

_Lies. It is a false kiss._

_My fingers drop like a puppet sliced from its strings._

_You are dreaming._

Then let me wake in his arms _._

#

Jaime was holding her when she woke up, watching her with a line between his eyebrows. On his neck were the faintest touches of red from where her fingers had touched. Her hand was bandaged tight and even from the sofa Brienne could tell the bathroom smelled liked bleach.

Brienne lifted her good hand and ran it through Jaime’s golden hair.

“What are you doing?” he asked with a bemused smile.

“Just checking,” Brienne explained, nestling back into his warm, solid presence. Jaime said nothing more and pulled her tighter.

#

“………yes, confusion and chaos here at Winterfell Castle. Once the seat of power for The Noble House of Stark before the family was massacred by the Lannister armies in the Wars of the Five Kings, today less than ruins. For last night, this ancient sight famed for its paranormal dealings, inexplicably caught alight…”

#

  1. Brienne Lannister is twenty-seven years old.
  2. Brienne Lannister has been married four years.
  3. Brienne Lannister has a husband called Jaime whom she loves dearly.
  4. Brienne Lannister lives in King’s Landing.
  5. Brienne Lannister works in a gym.
  6. Brienne Lannister is learning to be happy.




End file.
